According to SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan, the Section 377A issue has become “valorized as being the last frontier for both camps”. He added that the ‘retain” camp sees it as a high-water mark or ‘safe harbour’ for societal values they regard as desirable and wholesome while for the repeal camp, the presence of the statute is a “clear sign of discrimination”. Any complete victory on either side will be seen as a complete annihilation of the other and the outcome will be undesirable, with probably a strong pushback from the losing camp.

SMU Associate Professor of Law Tan Seow Hon commented that if the longstanding law against gay sex is abolished, it would send the signal, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted in 2007, that “our stance has changed”. She added that the “laws shape the moral ecology within which people live and make their choices”, citing the example of the Media Development Authority's decision in 2013 to ban extramarital dating website Ashley Madison.